The Last Weekend
With the election quickly approaching, NGP VAN is proud to partner with Swing Left and other progressive organizations to re-launch “The Last Weekend,” a campaign to mobilize mass volunteer action across the country during the final, critical days of the November midterm elections. The Last Weekend is designed to bolster the volunteer capacity of Democratic campaigns in the most competitive battleground races during the final days before Election Day. It’s a coordinated effort, organized by Swing Left, of dozens of progressive organizations who share the same goals: to elect Democrats and save our democracy.
“With a radical GOP laser-focused on stripping away rights and setting us back decades, we must do everything we can to protect our hard-won House and Senate majorities and build Democratic power at the state level. In the most competitive races, every vote matters—it all comes down to turnout,” said Yasmin Radjy, Executive Director of Swing Left.
We couldn’t agree more. To put it simply, we’ve got to expand our majorities in Congress and build up more Democratic support at the state and local level to protect our rights and fight for a better future. However, in order to do that, we must get out the vote. By joining forces with progressive organizations across the country that share the same values, our collective strength can help power massive outreach efforts during this crucial time to contact voters. Fortunately, Swing Left is building upon the success of their past efforts in 2018 and 2020, which helped us take back the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives.
The Last Weekend was originally created and launched in the summer of 2018 ahead of the first midterm elections since Republicans took control of Congress and the White House in 2016. Swing Left enlisted the support of dozens of partner grassroots organizations, elected officials, cultural figures, and more, to catalyze nationwide volunteering through coordinated efforts leading up to and including the last weekend before the midterm elections.
The Last Weekend thus became the first time major grassroots progressive groups united at scale in a strong, coordinated effort to channel grassroots energy to support Democratic candidates up and down the ticket, across the country. Whereas past get-out-the-vote efforts focused on getting people to pledge or register to vote, The Last Weekend went further, turning fired up voters into energized volunteers doing high-impact voter contact work on the most critical weekend of the electoral calendar, when studies show GOTV efforts are the most effective.
By combining forces and leveraging new digital tools to make volunteering in critical races simple and accessible, the coalition created a network effect that recruited more than 140,000 volunteers who contacted more than 2 million voters during the four days before the 2018 election to help take back the House. In 2020, when we took back the Senate and the White House, “The Last Weekends” campaign included more than thirty partner groups and supporters including Hillary Clinton, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Mandy Patinkin, Natasha Rothwell, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, and more.
This year, The Last Weekend aims to make it easy for volunteers anywhere to get involved, contact voters, and help get out the vote in the key battleground races that will determine control of the House and Senate, as well as key gubernatorial and state legislative races.
Volunteers can sign up at thelastweekend.org to commit to take part in impactful actions to get out the vote in November, such as phone banking, canvassing, and sharing crucial voting information during the final weekend of the midterms. Join us and dozens of other organizations by signing up to take action during The Last Weekend!
